BenV's notes

One of my older (stable, works like a train) database servers still on Slackware 11 — well, heavily modified Slackware 11 😉 — is running MariaDB 5.1.something. Because I was tinkering with mysql settings I decided ‘hej, let’s see if upgrading to the latest version is a fun project!’.
Well, it sure is 😉

First of all, the newer MySQL and therefore also MariaDB versions have dumped a perfectly fine autoconf system for Cancer Make aka CMake. Well, that’s just great. There’s no cmake in Slackware 11, so I figured to grab the latest slackware cmake sources and build it myself. No big deal, except in order to use the latest slackware sources you’ll need tar with xz support. Well, while we’re at it anyway might as well build them. So I headed over to the nearest slackware repository and built myself a new xz, tar, findutils and pkgtools using the slackware 14 build scripts (slightly helped/modified to handle the absense of xz in my old system). There, now back to cmake. (continue reading…)

So every once in a while you have to mess around a bit with new stuff. Window managers for example.
I’m quite happy with Fluxbox (been using it since I started with linux), but it’s nice to see something new once in a while. Especially since development on Fluxbox is kind of …. dead. Well, not completely, but there’s just not much to be added without totally changing the thing.
My brother mentioned Awesome a few weeks ago, and during HAR last year it was also mentioned as something that I might like.
Which means it’s time to check it out! 🙂 (continue reading…)

I can’t for the life of me begin to imagine why anyone would use cmake as an autoconf alternative. (continue reading…)

After toying around a bit on the news sites I decided it would be interesting to see if qBitTorrent would run on slackware 64.
So we go to the download site, copy the url, and see if Slackbuild likes it. Slackbuild leeches, untars, gives the configure options (which are a bit buggy, I know, will be fixed next release), runs configure. Configure crashes out with “blabla boost blabla”. (continue reading…)

So I was bored and went through the usual slashdot, kernel.org, freshmeat.net, etc.
Once reading through the news on happypenguin.org I noticed it must be mario season or something.
After checking the descriptions I decided to check out Super Mario^W^WSecret Maryo Chronicles.
(continue reading…)

Of course you’re already thrilled by my slackbuild.pl script, but this one thing keeps popping up.
“How do I get configure to get my system paths right without giving it a line that’s 2389472389 arguments long?”
Simple, install a site config.
“A what?!”

It’s a tiny little shell script that takes the configure options and barfs out some prefixes and stuff based on the options presented to it.
So when I tell it prefix=/usr, it will decide that sysconfdir=/etc instead of sysconfdir=/usr/etc.

You can get my my version here:
[Download not found]

Now the important tidbit. In order for configure to automagically use this script, you wil need to set the environment variable CONFIG_SITE.
Personally I do this through a profile file. Download the config.site script, put it in /etc and put the profile file in /etc/profile.d. Logout/login, done.
Oh, here’s the profile file:
[Download not found]

Now if everything worked out allright, running configure should start with something like this:

benv@janeman:/usr/src/coolprogram-1.0$ ./configure
configure: loading site script /etc/config.site
prefix=/usr
sysconfdir=/etc
bindir=/usr/bin
sbindir=/usr/sbin
includedir=/usr/include
libdir=/usr/lib64
libexecdir=/usr/libexec
datadir=/usr/share
mandir=/usr/share/man
infodir=/usr/share/info
localstatedir=/var
sharedstatedir=/var/cache
lispdir=/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp

Wonderful isn’t it? 🙂